


(we might not play) this waiting game

by simplyclockwork



Category: Angst - Fandom, Reichenbach - Fandom, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock BBC, Sherlock Holmes - fandom, john watson - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning, Reichenbach, The Fall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What goes up must come down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(we might not play) this waiting game

**Author's Note:**

> unedited; in the works

Week three. It’s only week three, and already he’s addicted to sleeping pills. Already his eyes feel heavy; pinned open wide. The shadows beneath appear etched; carved into flesh.

The insomnia. The nightmares. They don’t stop; pills, medication, they do nothing. Make it worse, if anything—makes the dreams more vivid, more horrifying. Like someone turning up the volume and the contrast on an old television set, until the colours are wrong, and the sounds escaping the speakers are the shrieks of the dying. Wrong and garish and terrible, with static crackling, screaming from the speakers, set to max.

That’s what the dreams are like. The nightmares—no, that’s what they _are._

Every night he sleeps in the same place, and he wakes in the parking lot of Bartholomew’s. He’s watching Sherlock; watching a man standing on the edge of the world, arms outstretched like he might embrace the sky. Pull it in close and devour the very heavens.

He’s watching him, watching the shamed detective’s outstretched fingers, his spread-eagled arms; he’s watching him step off the ledge.

He’s watching him fall.

And, overlaying everything, static. The never ending, never-ceasing static, spread in a thick layer that tweaks the nerves—static. Piercing, paralytic nonsense noise.

In the nightmare version of the detective`s suicide, he sees it—he sees it all. John Watson watches, observes, doesn’t just _see._

_'you see, but you do not observe’_

Not anymore, Sherlock; not this time.

No, he sees it all.

Sees the phone tossed aside, the impact of it echoing out from the speaker of the mobile pressed against his own ear. Watches the detective stretch his arms out, as if in mimicry of the birds overhead, beaks full of static, wings noiseless, flapping.

Sherlock spreads his arms, steps off the edge. He’s falling. John can see it all. No untimely collision with the cyclist this time; nothing to impede the view.

Sherlock’s body hits the sidewalk with a crescendo of static.


End file.
